Cal Park Hill Tunnel: A game changer

By Yuri Hauswald
Bike Monkey, December 14, 2010

The Cal Park Hill Tunnel was officially opened last Friday and, according to Patrick Seidler, president of WTB and the non-profit TAM (Transportation Alternatives for Marin), will be a game changer when it comes to shifting people’s consciousnesses about the efficacy of future bike/ped projects. Seidler, who helped start WTB in 1982, should know a thing or two about advocacy as he has over 20 years invested in creating transportation alternatives for Marin. He is a passionate and well spoken advocate, who put his money where his mouth was when he opened an office in the Netherlands so he could study the Dutch transportation model. In 1998 and 1999 politicians and advocates from all over the world came to the Netherlands to, as Seidler says, ” reverse engineer how they had created such a bike centric country.” Seidler is simultaneously motivated and troubled by three things when it comes to our nation, which, he feels, are truly out of balance: 1) Our trade deficit, which has ballooned to $546 billion, mostly due to our dependence on foreign oil; 2) Our nation is woefully out of shape, with over 20% of the population overweight/unhealthy; 3) Our world is running out of atmosphere due to our dependence on cars.

Did you know that only 1% of people in the United States use bikes for transportation, versus the Netherlands, where over 27% of the populace ride bikes? Germany, the second most car centric country behind, yup, you guessed it, the United States, has 12% of its people use bikes. In 15yrs, with a strong emphasis on improving their road infrastructure to support bikes, the Germans improved their usage by 10%, proving that it can be done. Tim Blumenthal, president of Bikes Belong, believes that our car centric culture can be changed because, as he stated with a grin, ” great things happen when people ride bikes.” Let’s hope more projects like the opening of the Cal Park Hill Tunnel, one that cost $27 million and took over ten years to complete, are in our transportation future. The tunnel, originally built in 1884 by Peter Donahue for the Northwest Pacific Railroad, holds the distinction of being one of only four tunnels in the United States to allow trains/peds/bikes.

WTB’s marketing guru, Chris Schierholtz, assembled local press, advocates and some of the people responsible for the opening of the Cal Park Hill Tunnel for a very informative press conference on Friday morning. During lunch, advocacy luminaries, as well as Mill Valley’s Mayor Wachtel, spoke about the importance of the tunnel opening. Mayor Wachtel is championing a reshaping of Miller Ave and other Mill Valley streets so that they support the safe use by cars,pedestrians and bikes. This project will create a green corridor that, with the help of the Cal Park Tunnel, connects communities. It is estimated that the Cal Park Hill Tunnel will save 15 to 20 minutes on a cyclists’ commute now and, additionally, will be much safer.

At one point during the morning press conference Patrick Seidler, arguably one of the most important alternative transportation advocates in the nation, said something that really resonated with me. He stated that bicycle riding and the investment in future transportation projects has the highest “Return on Investment”. Now, if only more politicians and communities would grasp this like Mill Valley obviously has, we’d really start seeing some changes in our attitudes and approaches to transportation.